


She's Got the Best Melons in the Valley

by Lumelle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF Darcy Lewis, F/M, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 13:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15268818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumelle/pseuds/Lumelle
Summary: Darcy never imagined she could find somewhere more boring than New Mexico, but Pelican Town is definitely doing its best to be a contender. Thankfully she soon finds a very hot wizard to distract herself.





	She's Got the Best Melons in the Valley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meilan_Firaga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/gifts).



> I hope you like this! I had a lot of fun imagining Darcy dealing with life in Stardew Valley.

Darcy had thought nothing could beat New Mexico in terms of being boring and utterly featureless. That was, of course, before she headed off to Stardew Valley, and found out it was exactly what one could expect from a sleepy little town: mainly, sleepy.

It had been kind of refreshing at first, especially considering this was pitched to her as a sort of SHIELD-run witness protection program. Which might have sounded sinister, but considering SHIELD had been pretty much falling apart at that point, she’d been happy to take a chance to get out of sight of any potential Hydra agents that might be after her simply for even meeting Thor.

By the time it had sunk in that this wasn’t just a short break from her ordinary life, Darcy was well and truly fed up with the so-called peaceful country life. She was actually hoeing ground and sowing seeds, like she was living in the past. To be fair, this was apparently a perfectly sustainable way of life, with crops popping up in a matter of days rather than weeks or months. Maybe there was some sort of magic in the dirt around here, considering even she could make things grow with daily watering and not much else. It was a big change from the decorative cacti she had managed to kill back in her very first student flat.

Then came the apples, and Darcy started to wonder just how much magic there was in this valley.

Not the sort of apples that grew in trees, of course, the instructions that came with the saplings in the shop made it clear apples would only be growing in the autumn. No, she saw actual moving, living apples with tiny arms and legs running around the old community center.

The first time Darcy witnessed this miracle, she was certain she’d managed to get a serious overdose of fresh country air. Or maybe there was something in the water? There had to be something in the water. Either way, she decided the best way to deal with this was a good night’s sleep. And maybe some coffee. Yeah, coffee would be a great idea.

The next morning, though, she found a letter in her mailbox. The stationery was suspiciously fancy, with glittering stars and shining ink, but the message was what caught her attention. It wasn’t exactly hard to realize that the so-called rat problem was referring to the strange dancing apples. If this so-called wizard could give her answers that didn’t involve hallucinogenic river water, she was going to at least pay him a visit.

Apparently the alternative to potentially contaminated river water was an obvious drug trip that connected her to forest magic. She couldn’t even really be mad, though. Not when the wizard was, frankly, pretty damn hot.

As it turned out, the little apples were happy to give her rewards for collecting various things they liked. Or something like that, even with the so-called magic drugs she still mostly just heard high-pitched beeps when they spoke, but at least they wrote their lists with clear pictures so it was easy for her to make a checklist. She also found out that the wizard rather liked gifts of void essence and other such mystical things, though that discovery took a bit more trial and error. (At least he’d better actually like them and not just be pretending. She’d actually had to learn to use a sword, since apparently a taser wasn’t exactly the weapon of choice against cave monsters. All that hard work had to count for something; she wouldn’t get covered in monster guts just for anyone. …Okay, so maybe the monster guts part wasn’t that attractive, but that was why she cleaned herself up before dropping by the tower.)

The wizard’s name was Stephen, as she found out, and he claimed to be guarding the balances of magic in the valley. Which made kind of sense, clearly there was some sort of magic around here, but honestly Darcy was more concerned about the way he guarded his impeccably trimmed beard. She very much wanted to trace it with her fingertips, and okay, maybe that was getting a bit ahead of herself. But really, who could blame her? Nice beard, nice voice, mystical powers, cool cape. He was like Loki but with proper facial hair and less genocidal hobbies. Darcy was fairly sure Stephen wasn’t going to try to wipe out all of Pelican Town to settle a grudge against an estranged brother or something. If he’d wanted to, he would have already done it, after all.

Okay, so maybe she was getting just the slightest bit blind to any potential flaws. In her defense, he was very charming when he wasn’t getting snarky, and snark she could handle. Snark was basically her first language, and also much less likely to lead to her death than big, glowing alien ships. Even taking into account that she now had a very cool obsidian sword that she could wield with relative ease, which she was fairly sure would increase her odds of surviving yet another alien invasion.

For all that Darcy liked to think they were growing closer, and was very proud of her increasing combat skills, she was still somewhat surprised to see a certain dashing wizard standing on her porch as she came back from another mine expedition. Which was basically the worst time ever, she had slime in her hair and quite possibly some skeleton shards in her bra, how the fuck those got in there she wasn’t sure, but clearly Stephen followed the Gandalf school of thought regarding when it was appropriate for wizards to appear. That was, whenever they wished.

“Ah, hi there, Stephen.” Darcy flashed him a smile before turning to her adventure chest, unloading most of her loot. Just because she technically could run around carrying hundreds of monster pieces all the time didn’t mean she wanted to do that for no reason. “Did you need something? You could have just sent a letter.” She actually checked her mail, thank you, occasionally at least. There was no need to mention the fact it had taken her over a year to get back to Jodi about that cauliflower. Clearly Jodi hadn’t been in too much of a hurry anyway, since she’d still been perfectly happy to receive it.

“I’m afraid this is rather more urgent.” Was Stephen floating? He looked like he was floating. Which was cool and kind of hot. “There is a matter I must attend to, and I would appreciate your assistance.”

“Okay, first, I’m not sure what sort of mystical stuff you could be working on that could be urgent, but I’ll take your word for it. And second, you need my help? Mine? Poor old non-magical me? Don’t take me wrong, I’m totally up for it, just not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“I’m afraid this isn’t merely a magical matter.” Stephen sighed, his eyes falling on the obsidian sword she had strapped to her side. “We will likely need any and all assistance we can get, and you have been gathering quite a lot of experience battling the monsters.”

“Is it an alien invasion? I bet it’s an alien invasion.” Which was not exactly what she had envisioned for a glamorous magic date, but whatever. At least she had something of a warning this time.

“I’m afraid so.” Stephen gave her a grave nod. “The fate of the world is hanging on balance. Not just this world, but all the worlds.”

“Sounds big.” Which wasn’t a no. She’d faced two potential apocalypses before, what was one more? “Let me grab a few extra hairbands, I don’t want to risk my hair getting in the way of alien-whacking. After that, I’m all yours.”

Somewhat to her surprise, Stephen smirked. “Do you mean to say that’s not the case nevertheless?”

And, hey, she was an adult woman, she could totally do this flirting thing. “Once we’re no more kicking alien ass? We can totally explore that further.”

For now, there was a world to save, and a hot wizard to impress.

(Darcy hoped this wouldn’t take them the rest of the season. Sure she had sprinklers set up, but she still needed to do the harvesting. She hadn’t put all that money into melon seeds just to see it all go to waste.)


End file.
